Back during the original Gulf War (1990s version), Margaret Thatcher famously told President George H.W. Bush, “Don’t go wobbly on us now, George.” It was her veddy, veddy English way of telling him to stiffen his spine and follow through.

When I suggested Republicans run on a slogan of “Repeal, Replace, Reform” I believed that it would be a winner for Republicans. Mitch McConnell agreed, and so did Karl Rove. There seemed to be a large push for a campaign run with health care reform as the centerpiece. I still believe this, but it’s starting to look like the Republicans are going a little, well, wobbly.

Fox News is reporting that “top Republicans” are starting to backtrack a little bit. The fear is that while repealing the bill is popular in the conservative base, it may not play well in a general election. The Republicans seem to be buying into the Democratic narrative that the more people learn about the bill, the more they’ll like it.

For instance, Democrats think people are going to just love, love, love these “surprises“: (H/T: Hot Air)

TIME FOR MOTHER’S MILK For a year after giving birth, nursing mothers must be allowed breaks on the job to express breast milk as often as necessary, and a private place to do so that’s not a bathroom (emphasis mine). Employers with fewer than 50 employees are exempt.

A TAX ON TANNING Tanning salons say they will be burned by a new 10 percent excise tax on indoor tanning that starts in July. But the American Academy of Dermatology applauded the move. According to the academy, indoor tanning before age 35 increases the risk of developing melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer, by 75 percent.

COMING SOON TO W-2 FORMS: HEALTH BENEFITS DETAILS In the name of transparency, employers will be required next year to spell out the value of health benefits on W-2 forms. “It’s about making consumers aware of what’s getting paid on their behalf toward health insurance, part of an effort to make everyone aware of how much we’re spending on health care services,” said Jennifer Tolbert, an associate director at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

LESS FLEX IN FLEXIBLE SPENDING ACCOUNTS Starting in January, you will no longer be able to tap your account to cover aspirin, vitamins and other over-the-counter medications, unless they are prescribed by a doctor. Come 2013, the total amount you can contribute annually will be limited to $2,500.

STRENGTHENING THE ‘S’ IN H.S.A. Times are tough. But if you’re thinking of raiding your health savings account to cover your mortgage payment or your child’s college tuition, think again. The health reform law increased the tax on H.S.A. withdrawals for nonmedical expenses to 20 percent from 10 percent for people under age 65. The provision takes effect in 2011. For the uninitiated, health savings accounts are tax-advantaged accounts linked to high-deductible health plans. About eight million people have signed up since the accounts were introduced in 2004.

ABSTINENCE MAKES A COMEBACK Abstinence-only education programs to prevent teenage pregnancy took a hit when President Obama took office and eliminated $115 million in funding, moving the money into more comprehensive programs that cover contraception and sexually transmitted diseases as well. Congress allowed another $50 million in abstinence-only funding to expire in June. The health reform law restores $50 million a year for abstinence-only programs for each of the next five years. But there’s a catch: states must match any federal funding they receive. “That may be significant,” said Heather Boonstra, senior public policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute. Last year, even before the previous $50 million expired, she said, “many states had already stopped participating.”

NURSING A BOND BETWEEN MOTHER AND CHILD Pregnant teenagers who receive home visits by nurses once or twice a month before delivery and for a few years afterward learn parenting and coping skills that can cut child abuse and neglect nearly in half, according to research published in The Journal of the American Medical Association. The $1.5 billion that home-visiting programs will receive over five years is by far the biggest financial commitment made to those evidence-based programs, said David Kass, president of Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, a nonprofit anticrime organization.

Taxes, penalties, regulations and, as a kicker, we’re spending taxpayer dollars to teach teenagers that it’s bad to beat your kids. Think about that last item for one more second: a home visit from a nurse once or twice a month will cut child abuse in half. Do they really believe this? Do they really, honestly believe that all we need to do to cut child abuse by 50% is teach teenage parents “coping skills?” That telling a 16-year-old mother who spent her formative years being beaten by her mother’s boyfriend that she should just count to ten when she starts feeling angry will have a massive impact on child abuse? Good grief.

And yet, this is perfectly indicative of the larger problem of the health care reform bill. Here is the Nanny State in all of its hideous glory, reaching down to take care of you by hook or by crook. You will learn to be happy with health care reform by being taxed, by being penalized, and by being instructed. Memo to “top Republicans”: this isn’t popular, it won’t become popular. The only worry is that it will become addictive. Democrats like to claim that Social Security and Medicare are popular, but they would probably find out that heroin was popular if they asked junkies. These programs are not generally popular except to those people who become addicted to them. Big government is the true opiate of the people.

But Republicans are right that they need more than a promise to repeal health care reform. They need to run on a promise to repeal the Nanny State that this bill represents. They need to offer a simple replacement for health care reform and they need to accent other issues. Health care reform repeal should be right near the top of issues, but the Republicans should be running this year and in 2012 on a platform of smaller government, less regulation, and lower taxes…a platform that will accent the job-creating nature of these proposals. Health care reform is a huge issue, but with a 10% unemployment rate, people are more worried about paying their bills tomorrow than a government reform plan that doesn’t take full effect until 2014.

The Republicans need to run on the idea that the Federal Government has absolutely no business telling private industry that they need to create a special room for lactating mothers. They need to run on the concept that Washington D.C. shouldn’t be telling restaurants what information to put on menus. They need to run on a platform that stresses that it’s not the job of Congress to tell you the preferred way to get a tan. Health care reform is not a disease. It’s simply the most visible symptom of a far more malignant virus that promises to choke the life out of the economy and the nation: Big Government. It is Big Government that needs to be repealed, and health care reform is only part of that picture.

It’s true that the GOP cannot completely dedicate itself to the repeal of one piece of legislation for the next three years. Instead, they should dedicate themselves to slaying the blasphemous, rotting leviathan that gave birth to ObamaCare, and whose tentacles are visibly squeezing the life out of the American economy. Big Government is a parasite that is more than willing to kill its host.

Like this:

Matt Drudge is using his finest bold type today: DEMS FEAR VIOLENT BACKLASH. The MSM is breathlessly reporting about this backlash. Congressmen who voted for health care reform are receiving death threats! In Rochester, NY someone tossed a rock with a Barry Goldwater quote attached through the window of the Democratic Party office! Louise Slaughter, of the famed “Slaughter Solution,” had her office window broken! A coffin was placed on Russ Carnahan’s lawn! We’re talking real wrath of God stuff here…fire and brimstone…dogs and cats living together…

I certainly would never advocate violence, but there needs to be a little perspective here. There are cranks and knuckleheads out there in every political group, but the air time given to this is intended for one purpose only: to delegitimize the opposition. By making such a public spectacle about what are, in reality, few real incidents, the Democrats are attempting to paint all Republicans and Tea Party folks as frothing at the mouth crazies. Don’t believe me? Here’s Louise Slaughter:

“It’s more disturbing to me that Republican leadership has not condemned these attacks and instead appears to be fanning the flames with coded rhetoric,” said Slaughter, a key supporter of the bill.

Now, frankly, that’s just a bold-faced lie. The Republican leadership has been vigilant in their condemnation lest they seem to be slow in responding to this sort of stuff. John Boehner, who as House Minority Leader qualifies as “Republican leadership” said:

“I know many Americans are angry over this health-care bill, and that Washington Democrats just aren’t listening,” Boehner told Fox News Channel. “But, as I’ve said, violence and threats are unacceptable. That’s not the American way. We need to take that anger and channel it into positive change. Call your congressman, go out and register people to vote, go volunteer on a political campaign, make your voice heard — but let’s do it the right way.”

I’m sure that getting a death threat can be a really scary experience, but my guess is that there isn’t a single public figure who hasn’t received a few death threats. You think Rush Limbaugh doesn’t get death threats? Sean Hannity? Glenn Beck? Ann Coulter? Michelle Malkin? I wonder how many death threats Newt Gingrich got when he was Speaker Of The House…my guess is more than a few. The difference is that these people are not trying to claim that the kooks out there are part of a wider pattern. The Democrats right now are running around with their panties in a bunch and it’s all nothing more than a clumsy pantomime of real fear.

The FBI needs to investigate some of the more outrageous acts that have taken place, like the rocks through the windows and the cutting of a propane gas line, but let’s get real here. The vast, overwhelming majority of the threats of physical violence are nothing more than a bunch of angry people blowing off steam in a way that they think will have an impact. The serious threats need to be addressed, and the rest chalked up to another day of doing business in the eyes of 300 million citizens, some of whom are too lazy or stupid to argue the facts and resort to cheap insults or threats. But painting these cranks as somehow being indicative of the much larger anti-reform movement is as wrong as claiming that the WTO riots in Seattle were part and parcel of Democrat operations. Just because a kook wears a Tea Party button does not mean that all Tea Party people are kooks.

For a particularly ghastly example of how out of touch the Left is on this, look no further than Bob Herbert’s ridiculous New York Timescolumn on the subject. Herbert is crystal-clear that he holds the entire Republican Party responsible for a few incidents at a Tea Party in D.C., many of which can not even be verified. I thought about creating a lengthy response to his tirade, pointing out many of hateful and violent things the Left has said and done, but it’s not worth it. For starters, he’ll never read it. And secondly, it wouldn’t matter to him. People like Herbert are prisoners of their ideology and see only as far as their blinders will allow them to see.

Just recently in Canada, a speech by Ann Coulter was canceled because angry Leftists were surrounding the auditorium, throwing tables and chairs, blocking the entrance, and demanding that Coulter’s books be burned. Are all Canadian liberals to blame, Mr. Herbert? Yeah, I didn’t think so either.

I sincerely doubt that these are the first death threats received by members of Congress. What is unique about the threats this time is that they give the Democrats the chance both to play the victim and to blame the whole of their political opposition in order to silence those people with shame. The Democrats with their sissy press conferences and fevered brows, fretting ominously about their safety, are speaking out in the hopes that the millions of good and decent people who make up the Tea Party movement will abandon that movement so as not to be identified with a few crazies and cranks. In the end, it’s all show biz, and it won’t work.

Violence should not be the means, but the ends of the Tea Party movement are still more than justifiable. Write, call, protest, read and understand the Founding Fathers, learn our history and the things that made America different…but leave the rocks and the threats at home.

UPDATE: Filling in for the semi-vacationing mistress of the house, Doug Powers is on the same page at Michelle Malkin’s site, while also pointing out some of the hateful speech that is coming from Democrats about this very issue: the odious James Clyburn accusing Republicans of aiding and abetting terrorism. Meanwhile Hot Air has video of Eric Cantor accusing the Democrats of fanning the flames of hatred. The difference between Clyburn and Cantor: Cantor’s right.

Fight the hype! (Well, not fight…but “peacefully protest the hype” doesn’t have the same ring, you know?)

It’s a cliche now, but that doesn’t mean that Michael Kinsley’s observation that a “gaffe” means a politician got caught saying what he believes isn’t true.

So I don’t look at this as a mistake from Michigan Representative John Dingell. I think that behind those closed House and Senate doors, when the health care reform legislation was being cooked up like so much crystal meth waiting to be forced on a population in the hopes of creating a massive, narcotizing addiction, this is the kind of stuff they say to each other. Breitbart TV has the audio.

When confronted by a radio host who makes the spurious claim that 18,000 people die every year because they don’t have health insurance, and that because the major part of the bill doesn’t take effect until 2014 an additional 72,000 people will die, Dingell explains that these things take time:

“We’re not ready to be doing it. But let me remind you this has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The hard fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 [sic] American people in different ways, it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.” [Emphasis mine]

Like this:

I can’t help but be reminded of that scene in the movie The Omen, where the nanny shouts “It’s all for you!” before jumping off the roof with a noose around her neck.

Last night we watched that scene replayed 219 times.

The rubber is officially on the road now. Bart Stupak has proven to be the Profile in Cowardice I fully expected him to be (and has rightfully been stripped of the “Defender Of Life” Award he was to receive on Wednesday), and the “health care reform” bill has passed the House.

There are a few things to learn from this:

There is no such thing as a Blue Dog Democrat in Washington D.C. Fiscal and social conservatism is a gimmick that Democrats use in Republican-leaning districts to enhance their chances at winning elections. They don’t mean it, and should all be voted out.

The Far Left wing of the Democrat party, led by Obama and Pelosi, with Harry Reid standing on the sidelines begging to be allowed to play, will stop at nothing to advance their agenda of turning America into a European-style socialist state. That can’t be stated clearly enough. They will stop at nothing.

The Republican Party needs to recognize the first two items listed here and understand that there is no bipartisanship in Washington D.C. as long as the Democrat party is a Far Left party. Negotiations with the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, etc. will only lead to bad bills. The Republicans need to snap out of the Battered Wife Syndrome they currently embrace.

What’s done is done, as Shakespeare wrote. I am under no illusions that this bill can be repealed any time before January 2013. But that doesn’t mean that the Republicans should not run in 2010 on a campaign to repeal and replace the bill. C’mon, it’s even a good slogan: Repeal. Replace. Reform.

The Republicans can not continue to bad mouth the bill without providing a clear alternative. As much as I admire and respect Paul Ryan, he has a tendency to get deep into the weeds when he talks about policy. What the Republicans need is a simple 5-point plan that can be printed on a single page of paper.

Health-savings accounts. Allows people to put aside tax-deferred dollars for use in health care. This money will not be on a “use it or lose it” basis as it currently is. It can be kept, added to, and left to heirs just like a 401K and IRA.

Real, meaningful tort reform. Limit non-income damages in malpractice cases, and limit the amount of winnings that can be collected by lawyers. This has been done on a state level in Texas, and health care costs have dropped because doctors will no longer feel the need to order so many CYA tests.

Allow people to buy insurance across state lines. This is a no-brainer. Allow people to shop for their insurance needs wherever they need to. Allow real competition between insurance companies.

Eliminate Federal requirements for insurance. Right now, the government dictates what conditions must be covered by insurance. The more things that are covered, the more the insurance costs. Allow people to decide for themselves what they want covered, and allow people to choose from a wide range of deductibles. The only medical coverage people need from insurance is catastrophic coverage, or drug coverage over a certain amount per year. Let me decide if I want my coverage to include sex-reassignment surgery, not the government.

Eliminate the individual mandate. First off, it’s unconstitutional. Secondly, if people choose not to have health care insurance then those people need to take their medicine when they go to the doctor. Strengthen the position of hospitals and doctors to legally pursue people who skip out without paying the bill, rather than pass the cost on to those people who do have insurance.

The fine details of any plan must be worked out, and the five points I wrote above do not necessarily have to be the five points that they agree upon, but the public face of the plan must be something that the public can digest easily and quickly. The Republicans have many plans floating around. They need to get together in the local Capitol Hill watering hole, bash out a final plan with the best elements, and then put it into a language that be easily understood: a one-page summary and a bill itself that is no longer than 50 pages, with a non-lawyer translation available.

Nothing will be repealed until January 2013 because Obama holds the veto pen, but that doesn’t mean that a Republican majority in the House and, maybe, the Senate, can’t send the bill to the President as regularly as clockwork and force him to veto and then defend his action.

Last night Obama said, “This is what change looks like.” This November will give the Naked Emperor another example of what change can look like.

It’s looking more and more likely that this travesty of a health care bill will be rammed through Congress one way or another. As I expected, the on-the-fence Democrats are collapsing like a bunch of broccoli under the arm twisting and noogie patrols of Obama and Pelosi.

I haven’t written much about this in the past week or so for two reasons: 1) I’ve been waiting to see how it would all shake out, and 2) I get so depressed when I think of this that I become practically inert. As someone who reveres the Constitution of the United States and desperately loves the ideals that this country has held in terms of liberty and freedom, the all-out assault on the Constitution that is being perpetrated on Capitol Hill is well nigh unbearable. I knew this gang of progressives, socialists, radicals, and idiots would seize any opportunity to turn the United States into a massive welfare state, but I never believed that they would launch such a brazen attack on the principles on which this country was founded. And for me as a New Yorker, there’s not a lot that I can do. My representative and my Senators are among the most liberal members of Congress. I’ve written several emails to Eliot Engel, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Chuck Schumer and all I have ever gotten back are form letters thanking me for my support. They don’t care. There are enough people in my area to make their re-election pretty safe, and New York is hampered by a Republican Party that is spineless at best and brainless at worst.

The question I keep asking myself is why the Democrats are so fired up to pass this bill that they will nakedly throw the Constitution into a shredder in order to achieve their goals. The answer, of course, is that this “reform” bill has almost nothing to do with health care and everything to do with power. Give Barack Obama credit for this much: the guy’s got a long-term vision. So does Nancy Pelosi, but Pelosi will continue to be re-elected, so this is a no-risk vote for San Fran Nan. Obama’s willing to sacrifice himself in 2012 in order to achieve what he really wants. Sure, he wants to be re-elected, but if he succeeds here he will have achieved his dream of pushing the United States closer to a top-down, European-style socialist nation.

Consider this: Obama has long been on record as favoring a European-/Canadian-style single payer system of health care. But there’s still enough sense (barely) in the Senate not to include “the public option.” What is in the bill, however, is a requirement that everyone in the country buy private health insurance, insurance which will be heavily regulated (i.e., price controls) by the Federal government.

I once thought that something like this could be a part of health care reform, but I was as wrong as I have ever been about anything. The very idea that the Federal Government can tell a private citizen that they must buy a service provided by a corporation is blatantly unconstitutional. The Fed has no more power to tell me to buy insurance than they have to tell me to buy 300-thread count sheets for my bed. In fact, the unconstitutional nature of this provision is clear to anyone who thinks about it for more than a second or two…and Obama, Reid, and Pelosi have thought about it for more than a few seconds.

Also in the bill is the regulation that insurance companies can not deny you coverage if you have a pre-existing condition, which means that insurance companies will be forced to accept extremely high-risk individuals. And because the government will be setting price controls, there will be no way that insurance companies will not lose money on this. Obama and Co. know this, which is why they make the unconstitutional case that in order for the plan to succeed, the young and healthy must be forced to buy insurance in order to subsidize the sick and elderly who will now being costing the insurance companies money.

So follow me here:

The insurance companies will lose money…a lot of money…because they can no longer differentiate between low- and high-risk consumers

This loss of money will be compensated for by the provision that forces the young and healthy to buy insurance

The provision that forces the young and healthy to buy insurance is unconstitutional and will likely be overturned by the Supreme Court

Without the influx of money from the young and healthy, the insurance companies will incur massive financial losses because the government will not allow them to charge free market rates for insurance or make distinctions between high- and low-risk consumers

The insurance companies will fail

So what could Obama/Pelosi/Reid possibly gain by the failure of the insurance system? Is there a reason that these people would want the insurance companies to fail?

Of course. The failure of the insurance companies, even the failure of only some of the insurance companies, would give the government the opening to step forward and become the “insurance provider” for all those people who find themselves without insurance. What we are seeing on Capitol Hill this weekend is the ugly conception of a rough beast known as single-payer, and all that it entails: poor care, rationing, wait lists, doctor shortages, endless levels of bureaucracy.

I will not give up hope that this bill will fail until Obama puts his signature on it. When that happens, I will do everything in my power to have the bill repealed in toto.

The Democrats believe that a vote tomorrow and a signature on Monday with lots of cameras and the smiling mug of Barry Obama will end this debate and that the American people will fall in step and bleat contentedly like the good sheep they are. The Democrats are wrong.

In my entire life I have never seen so many people so engaged on so many levels, and that will only increase when the new taxes, higher premiums, and Medicare cuts actually happen. This bill is the legislative equivalent of Pearl Harbor, and the Democrats may pat themselves on the back for launching such a successful attack, but they will only awaken a sleeping giant.

As expected, the Blogosphere is burning today. More reading from some of my faves: Hot Air has updates and even references the same Yeats poem I did. Also more here, here, and here. In a related item, Hot Air is also highlighting a great video of an exchange on Medicare reform between my newest hero Paul Ryan and the repellent Louise Slaughter (of “Slaughter Solution” fame).

This Sunday, HBO will air the first episode of The Pacific. It’s the much anticipated followup to the 2001 miniseries Band of Brothers.

The earlier miniseries premiered just before September 11, 2001 and did not do particularly well in the ratings, largely because America had been suddenly thrust into a real war and as thousands lay dead in lower Manhattan, the appetite for watching more brutal conflict on television was understandably low. Still, due to reruns on HBO and The History Channel, and the DVD release, Band of Brothers has found a huge audience. Deservedly so. Viewed as a whole, it’s the greatest film about war ever made: heartbreaking, rousing, patriotic, perfectly acted, and intensely realistic. The producers, Stephen Spielberg and Tom Hanks, deserve an enormous amount of applause and credit for their efforts.

Obviously, I haven’t seen The Pacific yet, but I will certainly be watching. If it is half as good as Band of Brothers, it will be very, very good indeed. The trailers I have seen promise more of the same intensity and realism.

But this time I’m a little unsure. I started watching Band of Brothers knowing in my heart and soul that it was going to be good, and it exceeded my wildest expectations. For a long time, I felt the same sort of anticipation for the new miniseries. But now, as the premiere draws closer and the press starts to mount, I am a little less sure. Why? Because Tom Hanks is an idiot.

There are other ambitions for their latest project. Asked if they expect “The Pacific” to resonate with viewers when it comes to the conflicts America faces today, Hanks responded quickly.

“We want it to resonate completely,” he said. “The war in the Pacific was a war of terror and racism, of suicide attacks. Both sides viewed the other side as being subhuman dogs, from a civilization that didn’t recognize the advancement of human kind.

“Sound familiar? Sound like something that might be going on?” he asked, referring to the U.S.-Middle Eastern conflict.

He noted that Americans who once bitterly dismissed the Japanese as barbaric now accept them as friends and equals.

“Right now we’re facing a different part of the world where they view us and we view them as an aberration of humanity,” Hanks said. “There’s a possibility that somewhere down the line, 60 years from now, we can look at the people that are trying to kill us and we are killing now as we do the Japanese today.” [Emphasis mine]

Hanks and Spielberg had an agenda with Band of Brothers: to honor the World War II vets who beat back fascism in Europe. But after reading the quotes above, I am dreading the concept of another agenda undermining The Pacific: moral equivalency between U.S. forces and Japanese forces, and a metaphorical link to the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghnistan.

I’m not even sure where to begin with Hanks’s dribble. It is certainly true that Americans had preconceived notions and prejudices regarding the Japanese. At the time of the Pearl Harbor bombing, many Americans had never even seen a Japanese person. But to claim that the war in the Pacific was a war of “racism” on both sides is ludicrous. Japan had been steadily conquering Southeast Asia for years, brutally savaging anyone who stood in their way. Was it racist to want to defeat that? Why? Because the Japanese were not blonde with blue eyes like so many Germans? Why does the war in Europe get a pass from racism? Were there not jokes and caricatures of the Germans common in U.S. ranks? Did we not view the Nazis as “subhuman dogs?” And did the Nazis not deserve to be thought of in that manner? If it’s racist to think that an enemy that tortures and enslaves civilians, performs medical experiments on POWs and children, and that ruthlessly exterminates anyone who they believe is not of the right ethnicity is comprised of “subhuman dogs”…well, then, I guess I’m guilty as charged. Of course, both the Japanese and Germans were guilty of those atrocities during World War II. The United States, on the other hand, was not.

I’m not denying that individual U.S. soldiers committed atrocities. War brings out the best and the worst in individuals, and there are certainly well-documented cases of American soldiers committing atrocities. But for the Japanese and Germans, atrocities were standard behavior. Compare how Japan behaved in Nanking in 1937 with how the United States behaved in Japan in 1946. Compare the Bataan Death March to the treatment of Japanese POWs in American captivity, or even the Japanese wrongly interred in the States. Hanks says that Americans now look at the Japanese as friends when they once dismissed them as barbaric. That’s very true, but it’s a truth made possible only by the crushing of Imperial Japan. Americans thought of the Japanese as barbaric, because that’s exactly how the Japanese forces acted. In many ways, the Japanese were more savage than even the Nazis.

America did not go to war with Japan because we believed them to be less than human. We went to war with Japan because they were a brutal imperialist country bent on total rule of Southeast Asia who would allow nothing to get in their way. Sorry, Tom, but to somehow draw a moral equivalency here is an insult to all those who fought in the Pacific.

It’s also an insult to the soldiers fighting in the Middle East today. Is Iraq a racist war? Is Afghanistan? Do we view Iraqis and Afghanis as “an aberration of humanity?” Tom Hanks thinks we do, despite the great efforts we are making to spare civilian lives and create some sort of liberty and democracy in those nations. Are the jihadists an aberration of humanity? Philosophical explorations of the question aside (no, they’re not), the instinctive response is yes. And for good reason. The oppression of women and children, the contempt for freedom, and the hatred of modernity that underlie the jihadist belief system are all valid reasons to see them crushed. We may hate what they are, but it’s not a racist hatred, it’s a perfectly rational emotion based on their actions and words.

I will be watching The Pacific and, frankly, I expect it to be excellent. I’m guessing that as he’s making the press rounds, Hanks is just letting his instinctive Leftism get the best of his mouth. He has done much good by American veterans, including his work with the World War II Memorial in Washington D.C. But as his knee jerk quotes above tell, he can also do better than to insinuate that we are no different than our enemies. We are very, very different.

UPDATE: I see that Hot Air and Big Hollywood are also on this, but their concentration is on different quotes from Hanks, which makes me wonder if I was being too generous in my final paragraph. Maybe the idiot really believes this junk he’s spewing.